1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital television (TV) antenna and, more particularly, to a thin flat panel style digital TV antenna being thin, lightweight and compact and serving to receive digital TV signals over the air.
2. Description of the Related Art
Televisions have almost become an essential electric appliance in every household. For analog televisions back in the early days, the degree of clarity with which a televised image is displayed highly depends on the intensity of television signals carried by frequency modulation (FM) or amplitude modulation (AM) radio waves. VHF (Very High Frequency) band and UHF (Ultra High Frequency) band are major frequency bands compatible with typical analog TVs.
Due to the use of cathode ray tube (CRT), it is hard for traditional analog TVs to take picture quality into account without compromising the design concerns of being compact and lightweight. To break through the bottleneck, digital TVs based on the technologies of liquid crystal display (LCD), plasma display (PD), organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and the like gradually replace the conventional analog TVs. Most digital TVs are compatible with digital TV signals over the UHF band. As each TV antenna is designed according to the frequency band of the received TV signals thereof, technically, antennae of analog TVs can be used to receive UHF TV signals. However, attenuated TV signals inevitably lead to blurred TV images. TV signals are easily attenuated due to blockage of buildings and atmospheric rain and clouds, and are thus prone to electromagnetic interference. Therefore, regular analog TVs are normally equipped with large-size outdoor antennae to mitigate the signal attenuation. With reference to FIG. 6, a conventional analog TV antenna has two extendable streamline antennae 61 and two dish antennae 62 for receiving VHF and UHF TV signals. However, the two streamline antennae 61 and the two dish antennae 62 require larger space for mounting and storage and are operationally inflexible. Additionally, the conventional analog TV antenna is structurally complicated and has many parts, rendering inconvenience to users in mounting, cleaning and maintaining the antenna and cost-ineffectiveness in production. Accordingly, improvement should be made for the conventional analog TV antenna to be compatible for use with digital TVs.